WASHINGTON  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit on Dec. 25, started talking to investigators after two of his family members arrived in the United States and helped earn his cooperation, a senior administration official said Tuesday evening.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

Mr. Abdulmutallab, 23, began speaking to F.B.I. agents last week in Detroit and has not stopped, two government officials said. The officials declined to disclose what information was obtained from him, but said it was aiding in the investigation of the attempted terrorist attack.

With the family, the F.B.I. approached the suspect, the senior administration official said, speaking to reporters at the White House on the condition of anonymity because of the pending legal case. He has been cooperating for days.

The cooperation was first disclosed during a Congressional hearing on Tuesday, as the suspects interrogation became the subject of an intense political debate over whether he initially stopped providing information after he was read his Miranda rights and received a lawyer. The administration was seeking to refute the notion that he was treated differently from any other terrorism suspects since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The White House hastily called a briefing on Tuesday evening to discuss the new details of the case. The senior administration official provided this account:

...Most of the extremism Ulama in Northern Muslim Nigeria are benefactors of Alhaji Mutallab, Dr. Mutallab groomed extreme Muslim businesses in Saudi Arabia, He has extreme business in Dubai and he has extreme religious business in Yemen and he has business and property in Yemen. Alhaji Mutallab is the owner of the only Islamic Bank in Nigeria, Alhaji Mutallab has ties and interest in almost all the extremist muslim religious groups in Nigeria. He is a top leader of the Sharia movement COUNCIL in Nigeria. This guy is dangerous and he has gotten it hot and thats why he is running from pillar to post because he destroyed Nigeria with his corrupt ways and his muslim jihadist ideas for long time...

...Since Christmas Day when fate foiled 23-year old Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallabs attempt to bring down a jetliner over Detroit one has watched in dismay as his father, Alhaji (Dr.) Umaru AbdulMutallab and the rest of his family embarked on a subtle PR ploy to cast themselves as unfortunate victims of their sons indiscretion. Some, particularly in the popular press seem to have bought into their ploy: In a side bar, The New York Times proclaimed: Parents of Suspect Offer Help. From his London base, one Eddie Iroh in comments made in Nigerias Next newspaper was quick to praise Mutallab, the father for alerting Nigerian authorities and the US Embassy in Nigeria that his son had gone AWOL.

My reading and assessment of Alhaji (Dr.) Mutallabs alert is that he simply dialed 911 to for help that could bring his son back to him. The family statement confirmed as much: We were hopeful that they would find and return him home, it reads in part. The US Embassy cared less and rightly so, to use their system to help a man who pays neither tax nor tight to sustain it to look for his son and bring him home. That US authorities simply inserted the lads name into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, the extensive collection of data on more than 500,000 people, instead of the far smaller no-fly list, which has only 4,000 names, or the so-called selectee list of 14,000 names of people who are subjected to more thorough searches at checkpoints underscores the validity of my assessment even further. As for the Nigerian authorities, its premature at this point to even bother to infer why they wouldnt bate an eyelid in response to Mutallabs distress call. That fact will unfold clearly a little later in this piece....

COMMENTS ARE INTERESTING:

Thank you for this article. The father himself is a an Islamic fundamentalist but of different persuasions, the type you find in the northern Nigeria - the Feudo-Caliphal establishment in northern Nigeria whose only investment in the Nigerian project is a lazy and parasitic dependency on other peoples oil in the Niger Delta. Of course he was conscious of implication of his estranged terrorist son to his shady business interests and romance with the global terrorists, funding his numerous business empire - the Islamic bank which he has been trying to float for a while now and his ownership of First Bank, among others. So the only option he had was to self report the lost son (talk of sacrificial lamb!) so as to shift attention from his own crime in case the boy got caught. I hope the CIA will beyond this acting and unravel the fathers link with the world terrorist groups.

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